Women should be at centre of every recovery, development effort

Women should be placed at the centre of every post-pandemic recovery and development effort, Vietnamese Vice President Võ Thị Ánh Xuân told the 2021 Global Summit of Women in Lisbon, Portugal, on Thursday (local time).

Addressing the summit’s opening ceremony, Vice President Xuân underlined women’s comprehensive role in and enormous contributions to common efforts to contain the COVID-19 pandemic and respond to its negative impacts.

However, she noted, women and girls were also the ones suffering the most from the pandemic and facing the risk of lagging behind after the pandemic.

To achieve a peaceful, prosperous, humane, and sustainable world, the Vice President underlined the need to promote women’s role and full and equal participation in keeping national and international peace and security, especially in preventing conflicts and resolving non-traditional challenges, thus creating a solid foundation for transforming economies.

Women should be placed at the centre of every socio-economic recovery and development effort in the post-pandemic period. They need to be given all possible conditions to access resources and knowledge, apply science and technology, and acquire skills for starting businesses and developing a digital economy, according to Xuân.

She said it was necessary to improve women’s digital access and application, bring into play their role in building a digital economy with green, inclusive, and sustainable growth, in tandem with the realisation of the Sustainable Development Goals.

She suggested the summit establish a fund or annual awards for honouring excellent initiatives to ensure gender diversity in business leadership, and for women who run micro-, small-, and medium-sized enterprises or greatly contribute to society, the pandemic fight, and environmental protection.

The Vice President also called for enhancing the role and improving operations of women’s networks in various areas and at all levels so that women can connect, share experience, seek partners, and assist one another more easily.

She highlighted Vietnamese women’s significant role and major contributions to the country throughout history. Women account for 30.26 percent of deputies in the country’s incumbent National Assembly (the highest percentage over the last 45 years), 50 per cent of the key positions in ministries and ministry-level agencies, and 26.5 per cent of business owners (ranking sixth in the world in terms of the rate of women entrepreneurs). They have also been actively engaging in the COVID-19 combat, especially on the front line.

"Promoting gender equality and women's empowerment is a consistent policy and also one of the top priorities of Việt Nam in regional and international cooperation frameworks," the Vice President said.

During the summit, the Vietnamese delegation actively took part in nearly 20 plenary and panel discussions on different issues.

International delegates spoke highly of Việt Nam’s achievements in gender equality promotion and women's empowerment, noting that they were impressed with the dynamism of Vietnamese businesswomen.

Themed “Women Transforming Economies”, the summit attracted more than 500 delegates from 45 countries and territories, including officials, female business leaders, and representatives of women’s organisations./.